Giving students opportunities to use new vocabulary.
From Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 - 13, Ministry of Education, 2004.
Concept Circles
The purpose of this strategy is to help students to explain concepts (including the meaning of words) and to see the connections between concepts (and between words).
What the teacher does:
Draw a circle on the board and divide it into four parts.
In each part, write a key word associated with the subject content. The four words all need to express concepts that are related to each other.
The students discuss the words in the circle with a partner, working out and explaining the conceptual relationships that link the words.
They share and discuss their ideas with the whole class.
What the teacher looks for:
Are the students explaining the links?
How accurately are the students using the specialised words when they are explaining the relationships between concepts.
A variation on this strategy is to leave one segment of the circle blank and ask the students to first work out what the missing concept or term is and then explain that decision as a group to the class.
From Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 - 13, Ministry of Education, 2004.
Concept Circles
The purpose of this strategy is to help students to explain concepts (including the meaning of words) and to see the connections between concepts (and between words).
What the teacher does:
For example:
What the students do:
What the teacher looks for:
A variation on this strategy is to leave one segment of the circle blank and ask the students to first work out what the missing concept or term is and then explain that decision as a group to the class.